e that we was married an' that she
had went as far as to marry me in the sacred cause of science because man
an' wife is one, an' what I knowed about them ellerphants she now had a
right to know.

"Sir, she had put one over on me. So bein' strickly hones' I had to show
her where them ellerphants lay froze up under the marsh."

V

Where the ambition of this infatuated woman had led her appalled us all.
The personal sacrifice she had made in the name of science awed us.

Still when I remembered that detaining arm sleepily lifted from the
nuptual hammock, I was not so certain concerning her continued martyrdom.

I cast an involuntary glance of critical appraisal upon James Skaw. He
had the golden hair and beard of the early Christian martyr. His features
were classically regular; he stood six feet six; he was lean because fit,
sound as a hound's tooth, and really a superb specimen of masculine
health.

Curry him and trim him and clothe him in evening dress and his physical
appearance would make a sensation at the Court of St. James. Only his
English required manicuring.

The longer I looked at him the better I comprehended that detaining hand
from the hammock. _Fabas indulcet fames_.

Then, with a shock, it rushed over me that there evidently had been some
ground for this man's letters to me concerning a herd of frozen mammoths.

Professor Bottomly had not only married him to obtain the information but
here she was still camping on the marsh!

"James Skaw," I said, tremulously, "where are those mammoths?"

He looked at me, then made a vague gesture:

"Under the mud--everywhere--all around us."

"Has _she_ seen them?"

"Yes, I showed her about a hundred. There's one under you. Look! you can
see him through the slush."

"Ach Gott!" burst from Dr. Fooss, and he tottered in his saddle. Lezard,
frightfully pale, passed a shaking hand over his brow. As for me my hair
became dank with misery, for there directly under my feet, the vast hairy
bulk of a mammoth lay dimly visible through the muddy ice.

What I had done to myself when I was planning to do Professor Bottomly
suddenly burst upon me in all its hideous proportions. Fame, the plaudits
of the world, the highest scientific honours--all these in my effort to
annihilate her, I had deliberately thrust upon this woman to my own
everlasting detriment and disgrace.

A sort of howl escaped from Dr. Fooss, who had dismounted and who had
been scratching i